Hollywood in 1993 continued to dominate international screens and the loyalty of audiences throughout the world to an extent that threatened the survival of smaller national cinemas. At the Venice Festival in September, a conference of major filmmakers from throughout the world met to discuss this issue. U.S. artists proved as alarmed as the rest by the cultural implications of American dominance, but none perceived a solution to an imbalance that ultimately reflected Hollywood’s economic strength, marketing skills, and technical superiority. A small victory was won through the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which excluded films and television programs from global tariff cuts. Business news was dominated by the efforts of various firms to buy or merge with Paramount Communications Inc.

English-Speaking Cinema

United States

Confirming Hollywood’s command of world audiences, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park supplanted the same director’s E.T.--The Extraterrestrial as the most profitable film of all time. Audiences mesmerized by the extraordinary technical effects that brought prehistoric animals to life seemed untroubled by the film’s weak script and poor characterizations. Other top box-office films of the year included The Fugitive, based on a vintage television series and directed by a first-time filmmaker, Andrew Davis; Wolfgang Petersen’s thriller about a foiled presidential assassination, In the Line of Fire; Sydney Pollack’s adaptation of John Grisham’s best-selling novel The Firm; and Adrian Lyne’s predictable Indecent Proposal. Meanwhile, audiences proved increasingly resistant to star vehicles mechanically concocted for visceral appeal, such as Marco Brambilla’s Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes (see BIOGRAPHIES) and John McTiernan’s The Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another Stallone vehicle, Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger, was more favourably accepted.

Artistically, the outstanding U.S. film of the year was Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, which adapted a group of minimalist short stories by Raymond Carver to construct an apocalyptic fresco of fin de siècle human life, viewed in the microcosm of greater Los Angeles. A different reflection on contemporary American nightmares was Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down, about an urban dweller who suddenly revolts with violence against the frustrations of daily existence.

The year was generally a good one for comedy. Ivan Reitman’s Dave, a striking departure from the director’s earlier teen extravaganzas, was a political fable in the manner of Mark Twain or Frank Capra, about a simple guy who doubles for the president. In Manhattan Murder Mystery, a story of New York socialites caught up in a crime investigation, Woody Allen returned to pure comedy, without philosophical pretensions. Chris Columbus succeeded with Robin Williams cross-dressing as a nanny in Mrs. Doubtfire.

Joe Dante’s Matinee appealingly parodied 1960s horror movies, comparing the fantasy fear on the screen with America’s real-life traumas in the Cuban missile crisis. Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day dealt with the frustrations and romance of a TV weatherman reliving the same day over and over in a small town in Pennsylvania. In Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, the romantic couple did not meet one another until the end of the movie. Barry Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family Values continued the saga of the macabre clan, and the satiric Tim Burton’s the Nightmare Before Christmas displayed masterful animation.

Several actors made notable debuts as directors. In The Man Without a Face, in which he also starred, Mel Gibson surmounted a naive script through basic sincerity and instinctive skill. Robert De Niro’s A Bronx Tale, based on Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical novel, related a boyhood in a Bronx Italian community. De Niro himself played a father trying to extricate his son from the influence of the paternalistic local Mafia boss. Forest Whitaker’s first film, Strapped, dealt with the hazards of life in a contemporary black community.

Adaptations from other sources included Martin Scorsese’s sumptuous and elegant adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and David Cronenberg’s disappointing screen version of David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly. The Australian John Duigan directed a sensitive adaptation of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s best-seller Rising Sun took care to portray the Japanese business community in the U.S. in a more flattering light than the original.

A notable example of international production was Agnieszka Holland’s The Secret Garden, based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s book. Though U.S.-financed, the film had a Polish director and British cast and was shot in England. Steven Soderbergh made a richly evocative film, adapted from A.E. Hochner’s biographical King of the Hill, about a young boy growing up in the Depression era.

Other films of the year meriting mention included Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way, with Al Pacino as a Puerto Rican gangster constantly frustrated in his attempts to go straight; Anthony Minghella’s well-observed and charming romantic comedy Mr. Wonderful; Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World, a chase thriller with Eastwood himself in a lead role; Ronald F. Maxwell’s conscientious four-hour epic of the Civil War, Gettysburg; and the American-Asian director Wayne Wang’s adaptation of Amy Tan’s best-seller The Joy Luck Club, about the difficult relationships of American Chinese mothers and daughters.

Notable films by African-American directors included Menace II Society, an unremittingly violent picture of black gang life in Los Angeles, directed by the 21-year-old twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes; Ayoka Chenzira’s feature debut with an independent production, Alma’s Rainbow, an affectionate and lively portrait of three New York City women; Mario Van Peebles’ creation of a black western pastiche in Posse; and John Singleton’s following of his Boyz N the Hood,Poetic Justice, an inner-city love story.

Notable films released late in the year included Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, a powerful true story about a German factory owner in Nazi-occupied Poland who saved his Jewish workers from the Holocaust; Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth, the final movie in his Vietnam trilogy; Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, a drama centred on an AIDS-stricken lawyer; Stephen Surjik’s sequel Wayne’s World 2; Lasse Hallström’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, about a quirky household in small-town Iowa; Richard Attenborough’s poignant love story Shadowlands; Fred Schepisi’s satirical Six Degrees of Separation, based on the John Guare play; and Alan J. Pakula’s political thriller The Pelican Brief, from the novel by John Grisham.

At the annual awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles in March, Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven took the Oscars for best film, best director, best supporting actor (Gene Hackman), and best editing. The best actor was Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, and the best actress was Emma Thompson in James Ivory’s Howards End, which also won awards for screenplay adaptation (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) and art direction (Luciana Arrighi, Ian Whitmore). The best supporting actress was Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. Indochine (France) was adjudged the best foreign-language film, and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game received the award for best original screenplay. Federico Fellini received an honorary Academy Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement; and Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor each received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Sadly, before the end of the year both Fellini and Hepburn had died. (See OBITUARIES for Fellini and Hepburn.)

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.